@Anitka , if spend an evening going through posts, you’ll see quite a few families in the same situation.
For those students who are from very low income families, it is possible to get full ride to the most selective schools in this country if they are able to gain admissions. Looking at the numbers of such full rides, it doesn’t happen all that often because those so challenged rarely apply to these schools as they are often not prepared to do so.
Other levels of financial aid are available that assume some degree of savings and a large % of income in increasing amounts as the income increases. Family crises, situations often don’t fit neatly into the formula, so it’s often still not enough aid. The schools ‘ formulas determine how much family must pay, not the family. If a student has parents who refuse to pay or give out their financial information, no financial aid is available.
You’ll see many situations where a family can manage $20-30-40-50-60k a year, maybe, and these days the tab can be past the $80k mark. It can be undoable to go to these schools if they do not give a sufficient aid package. Many offer very little or zero merit money. The old “she’s so smart, she’ll get a full scholarship to Harvard” story is a myth. Harvard doesn’t give out scholarships unless there is demonstrated need.
As for merit awards, the big ones are difficult to get. My son got generous offers from Temple and Alabama automatically. Now Temple has stopped— you have to be assessed and there is no guarantee, and Alabama has scaled back the awards. He also was awarded a half cost scholarship from Tulane , but as staggering as that dollar amount was , $37k, I believe, it still left another $37k to pay! More, really, if parental visits, and other extras that often come into the picture are included, like taking your student and friends out for dinner, buying campus gear,a new computer, etc. We were not frugal about those things, I admit
A full tuition award still came up to $18k room and board plus other expenses at another school where the transportation for any of us was not a cost issue. NY has very expensive room and board numbers, and you don’t do much better going off campus in upper class years as kids always seem to want to do because housing is so expensive. Upstate, much better—student rent can be cheap in Buffalo. Same as in your current state—Pitt has quite the college community in Oakland, at costs far lower than what the university charges for room and board.
Where it stands right now for your daughter is that if your family situation isn’t going to yield a lot of financial aid, she needs to find schools where she is at the top of the student body in statistics, and that the schools are have the money to pay for such students.
There is much opportunity at such schools, and top students often will be shut out st the highly selective schools for the same. I went to a ceremony at our local college, whose name hardly ever shows up here for a young woman who was being recognized as an honored alum. She was a Rhodes Scholar—something she says there was no way she would have achieved st Cornell U from which she transferred. She was able to star in crew, get marvelous opportunities, and was happy there. Her community, her world. I’ve known many many successful alumni from that school, and it would categorized with directional schools.
Carrying tremendous debt to pay for college has become an enormous problem in this country. If there is no clear path to repay college, loans they should be kept to a minimum. Ones retirement should not be threatened by student debt. The series of loans we took out, and repaid were very painful, and we could afford them by every measure. And they would have been far more due to interest and even more painful to repay now, had we delayed the payment as we were so tempted to do.
I suggest finding a number of possibly affordable option, hopefully at least one affordable one. Your daughter is entering adulthood soon and it’s time she understands the financial situation she and YOU are facing. In light of that, she understand that cost us a huge issue in her college choices and become proactive in finding affordable options and amenable to going to a school within the budget.